Libya: foreign reporters 'outlaws'; Mideast attacks continue

New York, February 23, 2011--The
Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about the ongoing attack on
journalists and bloggers in the Middle East. Today the Libyan deputy foreign minister
warned foreign journalists crossing the eastern border that they will be
treated as "outlaws," according to news reports. In Iraq, gunmen raided the
office of a local press freedom group; in Egypt, pro-government supporters
attacked a group of local journalists; and in Syria, a young blogger was
arrested on Sunday, according to news reports.

Some foreign journalists in Libya have
been able to enter the country through the eastern border, according to news reports, but today,
Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid Khaim warned those who entered Libya illegally
that they will be arrested if they do not give themselves in to authorities,
according to Agence
France-Presse.
"There are journalists who entered illegally and we consider them as if they
are collaborating with Al-Qaeda and as outlaws and we are not responsible for
their security," Khaim said. Qaddafi's government lost control over the
eastern border on Tuesday, according to news reports.

"We are alarmed by reports that the
Libyan authorities consider journalists who have entered the country recently
to cover the political upheaval to be outlaws and collaborators with Al-Qaeda,"
CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney said. "The world is closely watching how the
authorities in Tripoli behave toward all journalists. They should desist from
such threatening rhetoric and allow the media to work freely. "

Attacks on
Internet connectivity
in the region have continued. In Libya, Net connections with the wider world
were suspended entirely for periods of several hours over the weekend. Levels
of incoming and outgoing Internet traffic as recorded by monitors outside the
country are unusually low, suggesting that the Net may be being artificially
restricted or specific regions cut off from outside access. Yemen traffic also
dropped earlier in the month, which Internet security experts Arbor Networks
have suggested may be due to the installation of increased filtering.

In Baghdad today, armed military forces
stormed the office of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO), a local
press freedom group, at 2 a.m. Bashar Mandalawy, a project manager at JFO, told
CPJ: "They broke the doors, vandalized the office, broke furniture, and
confiscated computers, cameras, and JFO's archives," including personal
information for all the group's employees.Qassim al-Moussawi, a military spokesman in Baghdad, told The Associated Press that the raid
was carried out by the Iraqi army, which allegedly had information about a
"company operating without a license."

Today in Egypt, a mob loyal to former
President Hosni Mubarak and guards for the Middle East News Agency (MENA), a
government news service, attacked a group of journalists who were protesting
outside the agency's building, according to local journalists. Mahmoud
al-Arabi, a journalist for Al-Shorouk
newspaper, told CPJ that around 25 journalists joined a dozen MENA journalists
who were protesting against the agency's pro-Mubarak editorial line. The
journalists demanded that MENA's head, Abdallah al-Hasan, step down. An
unidentified journalist working for opposition newspaper Al-Ahrar was
injured and hospitalized. The military dispersed the mob.

In Syria, security forces arrested popular
blogger Ahmad Hadayfa--who writes under the name Ahmad Abu al-Khair--on Sunday in
the coastal city of Banyas, according to local human rights groups. A fellow
Syrian blogger speaking on the condition of anonymity told CPJ that Hadayfa's computer
was confiscated along with his sister's. Hadayfa created a platform in Arabic
that allows the hearing-impaired to listen to blog posts and his blog, Ahmadblogs, discusses technology and
occasionally covers political issues. In one of his last
posts,
al-Khair wrote about the revolution in Tunisia, alluding to the possibility
that a similar scenario could occur in Syria. "This blog post might have been
the cause of his arrest," the fellow blogger told CPJ.